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MetroVampire & Rhosymedre

Part 14 - Yogurt And Cherry Tree Bark

It was almost the end of October; from the window of his room, Snape could see the forests roll away shaded red to green with the deciduous borders of the grounds giving way to the pines of the Forbidden Forest and the Highlands beyond. Already the promise of snow lay white on the caps of the mountains on the far horizon; the weather had become bitingly cold and he now understood the reason for the plethora of thick tights in Hermione's press and the collection of sweaters tucked under the rest of her clothes in the tallboy.

Hermione. He had been practising using her name; it had not, after all, been an unreasonable request. To be so used to a name and then to never hear it spoken would be disturbing. He well knew it; when had anyone other than the Headmaster called him Severus? Snape shook his head and drew away from the window where he had sat, watching the scenery. Winter pulled on his melancholia, and giving into it would a luxury he could not afford this year.

A knock sounded loudly in the silence of the room and Snape spun round, wondering who was pestering him now; the boys generally waited for him to come downstairs before ambushing him. Hermione had apparently - the gods be thanked - ensured some time ago that they did not pile into her room at all hours without a specific invitation.

Instead of calling the visitor in, he walked across to the door and opened it just enough to see who was disturbing him after lunch on a Saturday. He had thought he had made it clear as he came back from the Hall that he wasn't in the mood for company ... and he wasn't. He also had to go down to the dungeons at some point soon - he needed to complete one of the experiments that he was running to determine whatever it was that had created the bastard child of polyjuice which he and Hermione were stuck with now. Experience - a month of experience now, already, had taught him that it was best to make his intentions extremely clear if he was to avoid questions as to his whereabouts. Even so, he rarely got away without some protests from either Ron or one of the others, complaining that he was always working. Evoking his duties as Head Girl dealt with many of the comments - fortuantely the Head Boy was in Ravenclaw this year, or he would not have been able to convince his housemates that his duties were quite so onerous.

Head Girl duties were, though, onerous enough - not as bad as he made them out to be for the sake of peace and quiet but, still, quite unpleasant at times. For some reason, the teachers seemed to think that he - well, Hermione - would make a good mentor or confessor for some of the younger female students. He had always known, in the abstract and rarely thought about, that the Head Girl acted as counsellor when it was felt that she would be more appropriate than a teacher. He had never had occasion to send a Slytherin to the Head Girl - unless she was Slytherin herself, when it hardly counted - and had not reaslised how often the others did send students. One student in particular was ... interesting. A third year, and a Slytherin - one who hid herself away so that he had barely noticed over the last couple of years and, even now, still had difficulty remembering her name - was the most recent person to be added to his roster. She had come voluntarily, which was intriguing, but he had not yet extracted from her the reason why - it was another mystery to add to his workload.

Fortunately, it wasn't her at the door. Unfortunately, it was the Gryffindor Barbies - a term he had heard Hermione use, with a certain degree of distaste, on occasion. He wasn't entirely certain what the insult was, but insult it clearly was and that was enough. Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil; followers of Trelawney. That alone was more than enough to damn them in his eyes but they would insist on compounding the sin with their behaviour and attitude. Somewhere over the summer, according to Hermione, they had determined that this would be the year that Hermione acheived her full potential - only their concept of potential had more to do with attracting the opposite sex and rather less to do with developing the mind.

"Lavender, Parvati. What can I do for you?" He didn't open the door any further, hoping to discourage them. They grinned, though, clearly not put off by his manner.

"Hermione," said Lavender breathlessly, "we've got to ask you -"

"- what you've been doing to your hair! And your face!" finished Parvati, equally breathlessly.

Snape let his face stay blank, but a tendril of fear curling through his stomach as he tensed. Had they noticed him doing something out of character for Hermione ..?

"What do you mean?" he asked, wondering what on earth they were talking about. He tried to remember, but couldn't recall seeing anything unusual in the mirror this morning - and Hermione had not said anything when she had passed him in the Hall at lunchtime. If there had been something out of place, she would surely have said something.

"It looks so good!" squeaked Parvati, "You must have changed your shampoo or skincare or something! Is it some new Muggle thing you found over the holidays? Can you tell us what it is? We need to know!"

Snape was fairly certain he had never heard so many exclamation marks in a single burst of words; Lavender chimed in to add to the total.

"Oh yes! Please! With the Halloween Ball coming up we want to really look good - and your hair is so much smoother, it looks so so good!"

"The Halloween Ball? You mean the Feast, don't you?" Snape hoped to distract them by spinning the exchange off at a tangent.

"No, no," said Lavender. "Didn't you hear?"

Snape restrained the urge to point out acidly that, if he had heard, he would hardly be asking about it now ... instead, he just shook his head.

"The Headmaster announced it at the end of lunch - you must have left by then - they must have been talking about something at the teacher's table because he suddenly stood up and said that, for a change, the Feast this year would include dancing, like the Yule Ball!"

Snape almost groaned. Another of Dumbledore's bright ideas.

"Anyway," the diversion had clearly not distracted Parvati, "what are you using on your hair - let us see!"

Shaking his head, Snape stepped away from the door. He wasn't going to get away without more discussion on this issue, clearly. The two girls dashed in, grinning and - he could have sworn - giggling. They headed for the bathroom and he trailed behind them; they had obviously been in Hermione's room before, they seemed to know where they were going.

The bathroom was a little crowded with the three of them, but the girls were not discouraged - they looked around expectantly. Snape supposed he ought to be grateful that they didn't simply paw through his things to find what they were looking for. He reached over to the ledge next to the bath and took a few bottles and passed them over.

The bottles were plain glass, with a creamy liquid in them. The girls unstoppered them and sniffed, smiling at the scent that lifted from the liquid.

"Oooh, gorgeous," pronounced Lavender. "What are they, where did you get them? It's not that Channel stuff you used to use."

"Chanel," corrected Snape absently as he retrieved the bottles, "not Channel."

"Whatever," said Parvati dismissively. "What are these?! And where do I get some?"

Snape sighed. "I made them."

The reaction was amusing, after all. The girls just looked at him, then looked at the bottles.

"What do you mean?" came the chorus.

"I made them," he shrugged. "It's no different to what we do in Potions, after all. I researched the recipes in the library," he hid a smile at the dismay in their eyes at the mention of research and the library. "It's a mixture of herbs and oils, mostly. The shampoo has some castile soap in it, with yogurt, cherry tree bark and some butterbeer - it makes my hair a bit more manageable. The moisturiser is based on jojoba with some wax and glycerin." He held in a shudder at the idea that he was talking about skincare, for crying out loud. It was almost too much.

"A lot more manageable, by the looks of it," said Lavender. "It's much less ... um ... bushy than it was." She had clearly failed to find a more charitable term to describe the state of Hermione's hair.

"Thank you."

"Can you make some for us?" Snape supposed he must have looked as incredulous as he felt at that request, because Parvati quickly followed it up with "we'd pay you, of course, or do something in return - but it looks like it's a lot better than the stuff we get in Hogsmeade."

"What's in this one?" asked Lavender, picking up a small tub. He wasn't going to get rid of them as fast as he had hoped, clearly.

"Cleanser," said Snape. Anticipating the next question, he added, "it's made of oatmeal, sunflower seeds, rosemary and milk."

"I think I'd want to eat it," grinned Parvati. "Please, please, please can you make us some? Please?"

Snape hestitated, wondering whether Hermione would agree to do it. On balance, he suspected that she probably would.

"Yes, I'll make you some," he said, hoping he didn't sound quite as resigned as he thought he did - but, then again, perhaps Hermione would sound the same. The girls clearly didn't find it unusual.

"The cleanser's a bit more difficult than the other two - I'll make you up the dry stuff, you need to mix it with milk each time you want to use it. Or water, if your skin's a bit oily." Parvati shot him a suspicious look, clearly wondering if that was a personal comment. He kept his face as bland as possible; the last thing he wanted now was to provoke an argument over who had what type of skin. Perhaps he should diffuse the situation ... "you can add cream if your skin's dry." That was better - now it all sounded as though it was clinical.

The girls seemed settled in for the afternoon, apparently content to talk about skincare and cosmetics all day. Snape had other ideas - many other ideas, none of which involved conversations with the Barbies. He was just wondering how to negotiate them out of the room without being completely abrupt and rude - damn, he missed not having to care about people's reactions - when another knock came at the door. This time he was less inclined to question who it was and more inclined to be grateful that it offered an opportunity to steer the girls out of the bathroom and head them towards the door.

That gratitude vanished rapidly when he realised that Harry and Ron had come up to remind him that it was time to go and see Hagrid - had she forgotten that it was the last Saturday in the month, and they always went to have tea with him then?